He got a pleasant advantage out of the opening against Teimour Radjabov, who played what could be dubbed the “Accelerated Lasker Variation” of the Queen's Gambit Declined. They played the same line with But whites rook was locked in at a1, and black was active, so things was far from clear - black had strong compensation and it was hard to see how white could get piece play. Robson invited to the Queens Gambit Declined, but Rasmussen went for the Catalan instead. An unbalanced position occurred and black had an extra pawn, but his king was stuck in the center and queen being harassed after 14. This Queen's Gambit turned tactical early as a volley of trades erupted on the board. This book provides a repertoire for Black with the ever-popular Queen's Gambit Declined. The Catalan is a chess opening which can be considered to be White adopting a mixture of the Queen's Gambit and Réti Opening: White plays d4 and c4 and fianchettoes the white bishop on g2. Opening Cox also demonstrates how to play against White's other tries, including the Exchange Variation, Catalan and Bf4 lines. The IM played active in the Tarrasch Defence of the Queens Gambit and with 20h4 he started action at the K-side. Since that time I was keeping it and nobody played it. A common opening sequence is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 ECO codes E01-E09 are for the Catalan. Kramnik got a nice advantage in a Catalan: “Actually it was my preparation for Kazan; I was about to play it against Radjabov in 2011 but finally for some reason I decided to play something else. Black has two main approaches to choose between: in the Open Catalan he plays dxc4 and can either try to hold onto the pawn with b5 or give it back for extra time to free his game. From move 30 to 39 black with the black pieces.